Thirteen
LOSING MY RELIGION
DRIVING WAS HORRIBLE. I’d forgotten about needing my leg to work the clutch, which was its own kind of hell. For the first time in my life, I wondered why in name of all that is holy I still drove a manual stick-shift car. I’d always driven one, but until now, it never struck me as having some real disadvantages.
But every time I used the gear shift and clutch on the way back to my apartment, fire shot up my whole leg, making me grit my teeth in agony.
The fact that it was San Francisco meant I couldn’t exactly avoid upshifting and downshifting for long periods of time, either.
On the plus side, I actually found parking.
I lucked out, managing to get back to my neighborhood right at the end of street cleaning in front of my building for that day. Because of that, most of the slots weren’t yet re-filled from people moving their cars to avoid the expensive tickets.
Well, apart from one unlucky truck owner who had the tell-tale yellow envelope stuck under his wiper blade already.
Limping up to my building, I sorted my keys in one hand even as I kept my eyes trained on the pavement, skirting around broken glass and anything else that might slice open my bare feet. The sidewalk was relatively clear, thank goodness, and I stuck my key into the front lock a minute or so later, pausing only to stare at the unmarked white van I saw parked on the corner.
Nick’s people? It had to be.
I only hoped they hadn’t bugged my place.
Remembering I’d promised Ian I was going to stop by his place that morning, a wave of depression fell over me. I was dreading talking to Ian, and not only because I had no idea if he’d continue the charade he’d begun last night.
I guessed he probably wouldn’t. He’d likely talked to Nick again by now.
Either way, I don’t think I’d ever felt so bad about myself. I knew I wasn’t always the best girlfriend in the world, but I’d never cheated on one of my partners before. Truthfully, I’d never even come close before today.
I wondered if Nick knew by now that he’d been lied to by Ian as well, that Ian really had been in San Francisco last night.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know all the cloak and dagger logistics though.
At this point, I felt like I was on pretty shaky ground in terms of yelling at Ian for much of anything, no matter what lies he’d told. Still, it was pretty clear we had a lot bigger problems than I’d realized, and about a lot more serious, foundational things than Ian’s overly-frequent business trips. That depressed me as much as the actual cheating, I think.
More, maybe.
I sighed as I jerked the key inside the sticky lock, jiggling it a few times before I managed to turn it counter-clockwise to open the outer security door. Once I got through it, I checked my mailbox in rote, emptying it out before I began to trudge up the stairs to my two-bedroom flat on the fifth floor. I found myself thinking mostly about a shower now.
A really hot shower... to be followed by bed.
Well, maybe a really hot shower, a cup of coffee, a call to Ian, and then bed.
I really couldn’t put off calling Ian any longer.
I was still pulling myself laboriously up the stairs, using the bannister, when something else occurred to me. I no longer had my phone. Truthfully, I had no idea where my phone even was at this point. It could have been burned in the fire. Black might have it from when he collected me from the police station. Or Nick might have it in an evidence bag somewhere, to be examined by his tech team when they got to it.
I hadn’t had a land line in years.
That meant I’d either have to go pick up a burner phone somewhere, probably at one of the corner drug stores, or drive by Ian’s house to talk to him in person.
Either option sounded exhausting.
Even so, I found myself thinking maybe it was better. I needed to talk to Ian in person, given everything. I’d planned to ask him to come by my place later, since I wasn’t overly mobile, but maybe it was better if I went to him.
Maybe it was better if I did it soon, too.
I’d just reached the top landing as I made up my mind to go immediately after I showered and changed. I knew enough about injuries to know it was probably better to keep moving if I wanted to do it today. If I let my leg stiffen up too much, it would be agony to get out the door again later.
I was standing at the top of the landing as I thought it, pulling out my keys. I stared at the set, looking for the smaller, silver one for my front door...
When someone cleared their throat.
I dropped the keys, startled. They hit the mottled brown rug.
Bending down, the bannister clutched in one white-knuckled hand, I didn’t take my eyes off the man standing there.
He gave me a faint smile. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Miri.”
“Ian.” Grasping the keys off the floor, I straightened, wincing as I did. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Pity not enough to call me.”
I frowned, letting my eyes drop back to my key set as I limped towards where he stood in the alcove by my doorway, leaning against the wall.
“I don’t have my phone,” I said, deciding not to explain further.
I heard him frown, but I didn’t look up to confirm.
“I brought coffee,” he said, his voice artificially light, although I clearly heard the edge. “Of course, I got here two hours ago, after giving up on you coming to visit me... so it’s likely cold as fucking ice.”
I pressed my lips together, but didn’t answer as I inserted the key into the deadbolt of my door.
“What happened to your leg?” he asked, his voice colder.
“Shrapnel from a bomb,” I told him flatly.
He didn’t speak as I finished turning the stiff lock with my silver key. When I glanced up at him as I swung the door inward to my Victorian apartment, I saw him staring at me. The hostility in his eyes hadn’t disappeared, or even faded much.
“Shrapnel?” he said. “Is that a joke?”
I exhaled in anger. “Are you seriously going to pretend you haven’t been talking to Nick?” I said. “Jesus, Ian. I thought you’d drop the act by now.”
“Nick?” He stared at me. Then his blue eyes narrowed. “Why would I have been talking to Nick? Is that where you were all night? With Nick? Because I thought...”
He cut off his own words, as if biting them back.
“...I assumed you were with that other fellow,” he said, folding his arms tightly across his chest. His voice came out more subdued that time, but also colder, almost gruff. “The ‘client’ I met last night. Whatever his name was. Black.”
Exhaling more in weariness than anger, I entered my apartment, leaving the door wide open behind me for him to follow.
Combing my fingers through my tangled hair, I dumped my purse on the low table by my coat closet along with my mail and limped towards the kitchen.
“Coffee?” I said.
“Tea.”
I glanced over as he dumped two coffees in a cardboard holder into my trash, taking his foot off the lid pedal so that the cover fell down with a smack.
Averting my gaze, I filled the kettle all the way to the top and put it on to boil. Then I walked to the fridge and opened the freezer door, pulling out my cache of espresso beans. Dumping a bunch in my scuffed and grounds-dusted coffee grinder, I wrapped the rubber band back around the bag and tossed it in the freezer before fitting the cap over the top of the grinder.
By the time the tea kettle began to whistle, I had the filter set up over my cup, the beans ground to a fine, moist powder. Another cup held a bag of Ian’s high-end brand of Earl Grey, which I kept a box of in my cupboard.
It was low-tech, but it worked for me, living alone.
A few minutes later, I hobbled over to the kitchen table with both cups, setting the tea down in front of where Ian sat. He’d already taken his usual seat staring into the living room behind me, versus the one facing the windows that I always preferred.
I remembered the two of us joking in the past that we were perfectly suited because our instincts always drew us in opposite directions.
The joke struck me as pretty hollow now.
I took a sip of the strong coffee I’d already laced with milk.
“So?” Ian said, his voice holding impatience now. “Who goes first?”
I looked up, realizing only then that I’d been twisting the engagement ring around my finger in a nervous tic. One of the oldest tells in the world, according to my psych books. I saw Ian’s eyes locked on my fingers where I’d been doing it and stopped at once.
Realizing that the rest of it was just song and dance, I cut to the chase.
“I don’t think we should get married,” I told him.
Silence. I felt my jaw harden as I stared out the window, right before I looked back at his face. His expression had gone utterly cold, like a wooden mask.
When I didn’t say anything else for a few seconds longer, he met my gaze.
“That’s it?” he said, his voice even harder. “Do I get to know why?”
I felt my fingers tighten as I stared down at my mug of coffee.
“I almost slept with Black,” I said. Then, remembering his mouth on me, my hand fisted in his hair as I came violently against him, I felt my jaw harden more. “I did sleep with him,” I amended, feeling a curl of shame. “More or less. I imagine you’d view it as more.”
The silence between us turned almost physical.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I stared down at my hands wrapped around the mug. Staring at the ring I still wore, I felt that sick feeling of shame in my gut worsen. “I didn’t plan on it. It wasn’t...” I waved vaguely over my mug. “...planned. It wasn’t planned, Ian.”
Realizing how inadequate that was, I bit my lip, if only to force myself to stop talking.
It occurred to me that I might be being crueler about this than I’d ever intended. I didn’t want to hurt him. I felt like hell about hurting him, but I also didn’t know how to soft-pedal this and still be honest.
I probably shouldn’t have tried to talk about this at all right now, truthfully. My brain wasn’t operating on all four cylinders, and I knew it. Especially with how tired I was. Especially after everything that had happened in the last three days.
In the same breath, I realized I was angry with Ian too.
“Why did you lie to me?” I said, looking up. “Can you tell me that, at least?”
Ian continued to stare out the window, his eyes focused blankly to his right.
From the direction of his stare, he appeared to be focusing on the row of apartment buildings opposite mine, but he didn’t seem to be seeing anything. Truthfully, I doubted he knew where he was focused.
From his face, I couldn’t be sure he’d heard me, either.
“You told Nick you were still in Bangkok last night,” I prompted, gripping my coffee mug tighter in my hands. “You pretended with me that you didn’t know who Black was... that you’d never heard his name before...”
“What makes you think I had?”
His voice startled me into silence.
Then I shook my head, feeling my frown deepen.
“Ian,” I said. “Nick told me. He told me you said you were in Bangkok last night. He said you claimed to be working––”
“Working,” he said. “Yes. I suppose I did say that.”
He folded his arms, leaning back in the wooden chair. He stared at me, and still, his eyes were so distant I couldn’t read anything in his face.
I couldn’t be sure he was seeing me, even now.
“I suppose I wasn’t,” he said. “...Working. Not in the way I implied.”
The silence returned.
For some reason, I was getting more angry with him, not less.
Maybe that was just defensive, too.
“Meaning what?” I said finally.
His gaze sharpened as he stared at me. I still didn’t see much of him in it though.
“Meaning I did go to the Cliff House for business,” he said, abrupt. “...Unlike what I told you last night. At the time, I thought it was to assess an enemy agent, whose phone I’d traced back to that location. Rather, that business ended with me watching my fiancée...” He hit the word hard enough to make me flinch, right before he glared at me from across the table. “...being openly seduced by that same person. A man I now know to be a spy.”
“A spy?” I let out an involuntary laugh. “Black? A spy?”
“You heard me.” His voice grew colder as he leaned towards me. “He’s a traitor, Miriam. So I wouldn’t grow too fond of him, if I were you. You know what they do to traitors, don’t you?” Pausing deliberately, he leaned back in his chair, firming his mouth. “You’re not a stupid woman. Given that, perhaps you have your own theories about why he might have targeted you?”
I felt my shame turn into something else.
Something a lot closer to real anger, even as my hands curled into fists.
“First he’s a serial killer... now he’s a goddamned spy?” I said. “Are you kidding me right now? Did Nick put you up to this?”
“I’ve always told you there was a danger someone would use you to get to me.”
I found myself turning over his words, fighting to think about them.
Nick said Black was overly interested in Ian. That he seemed to know too much about him, and about what he did for a living. Further, Black had a background in intelligence. I’d never doubted that, even apart from all of his gadgets and his ability to get gun permits at a moment’s notice from the DOJ.
Even so, something about Ian’s explanation struck a different kind of warning note in me.
“Are you threatening him?” I said incredulously. “Black?”
“It wouldn’t be me making the decision, Miri.”
“That’s not what I asked!”
“I’m not a threat to Black,” he said coldly. “But my employers might be. They don’t tend to look very favorably upon traitors and terrorists.”
Still giving him a faintly disbelieving look, I shook my head, lowering my coffee cup after taking a long sip. “I’m sorry, Ian. I don’t believe that. I don’t know what you were really doing at the Cliff House last night, but––”
“Are you seriously going to tell me there’s absolutely nothing wrong with him, Miriam?” Ian’s eyes met mine when I turned, so cold I barely recognized the man I knew there. “Really? Is that what you’re telling me? That Black’s just a run of the mill private dick...?” His voice grew even more biting. “...Just like you’re a run of the mill psychologist?”
I stared at him. Wariness slid through me, enough that I studied his face openly.
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He leaned over the table, his eyes ice-blue.
“You just had to fucking sleep with the bastard, didn’t you?” he hissed, planting his hands on the table. “You just couldn’t help yourself, is that it, Miriam? How did it happen... being as ‘unplanned’ as you say? You just accidentally fell on his cock after you accidentally found yourself in his bed? Is that how it went?”
I felt my fingers tighten once more on the mug.
Even so, that thread of distrust I’d felt the night before, the one I’d ignored in favor of trusting the man I’d thought I would spend the rest of my life with, grew prominent in my mind again. That trust unraveled further the longer I looked at him.
Distrust wound through me around Black too, but it was different with him. Weirdly, when it came to some things, I trusted Black more.
Something else hit me in the same set of seconds.
Black hadn’t wanted me to come here, to my apartment. He’d practically begged me to stay there with him, to wait until his people found the location of the killer before I returned home. And sure, he’d wanted sex, but that hadn’t been all of it.
Black really seemed to think it wasn’t safe for me here.
But why? Why would Black have thought that? Why would Black think the killer even knew who I was, much less where I lived?
A cold finger pricked down my spine.
I knew why.
The truth of it stared me directly in the face. Really it had been there all along, ever since Black entered my life, only I’d been too dense to see it.
Ian.
Black had been tracking Ian.
Even as I thought it, my breath stopped, stuck in my chest as the puzzle pieces drifted down, falling into place behind my eyes. Black hadn’t only been asking questions about me that day at the police station. He’d been asking questions about Ian. Moreover, Nick told me that Black had known things about Ian––things he shouldn’t have known, not if Black’s only connection to Ian was through me.
Nick interpreted that as Black screwing with him... thumbing his nose at the police, or even as Black being jealous of Ian because of me. But looking at it now, I realized neither thing was true. Black hadn’t primarily been there to learn about me at all. I was a side project for him, a distraction, maybe even an unexpected bonus.
Black let himself get arrested so he could grill the police about the rogue seer he’d been chasing... not about me.
Remembering Ian and Black sizing one another up at the Cliff House, and the look on each man’s face as they’d stared the other down, I couldn’t help feeling the similarity there. Ian definitely hid it better than Black, but I could clearly see the strangeness there, too––that odd sense of difference mirrored in each man, if in separate and almost opposite ways. Moreover, it explained why Ian bothered to spar with Black at all. Unlike what I’d thought, that hadn’t been about me either. It had been about Black himself.
Ian saw Black as his equal.
Like a peer.
Once it all clicked, I couldn’t un-see it.
That fear in my chest worsened, catching my breath.
Black suspected Ian. He’d suspected him all along. Which meant he thought Ian might be the Wedding Killer, too.
And Black hadn’t told me because... well, because he was Black. I didn’t know his exact reasons, but maybe he’d wanted to be sure first. He’d implied that was the reason, that he wanted to be sure, that he wanted a positive ID on the killer before we did anything else. It occurred to me too, that Black might have been keeping me close in part to draw Ian out.
Or maybe even to protect me.
Impulsively, I opened my mind. I hadn’t tried to read Ian since the first week we met, and that had just been a precaution, a few light dust-overs to make sure Ian was who he said he was. But I needed to know. I needed to know the truth.
At first, I got nothing really.
Muttered words, images... a lot of anger, which I expected.
I got a bare whisper that went deeper than anger...
Malice.
Feeling that, I flinched.
I probed deeper, pushing harder than maybe I ever had before.
The malice deepened, grew more devious.
Hatred. Disgust. Then...
Jealousy. So much jealousy. Hatred of Black. Wanting him dead, cut up, his cock chopped off, his face slashed. Hatred of me. Hatred that he cared. So much hatred that he cared at all what I’d done to him.
Dirty whore halfbreed bitch...
Spiral cuts, a silver-handled tool shaped almost like a brand...
A shadow loomed over me.
I moved in instinct, feeling the danger.
I didn’t move fast enough.
Ian lunged over the table at me even as I jerked violently backwards. My chair’s back slammed into the wall as he grabbed my throat in both of his hands, dragging me towards him. Panicking, I threw my whole weight back, trying to break free, but he squeezed his fingers so hard he cut off my breath.
I fought to stand, swinging at him, but my bad leg buckled.
Before my mind could wrap around what was happening, he was dragging me over the table. He punched me in the face on the way there, knocking over our mugs, a vase, burning my leg on the coffee I’d only barely started to drink. Then he had me on the other side, where he hit me again, twice, stunning me.
The next thing I knew, both of his hands were locked around my throat.
I hung there, choking.
He held me up against the wall and part of the window frame. My fingers clutched at the thicker ones wrapped around my neck, my toes barely scraping the floor.
I kicked out at him with my good leg. Then I writhed in his hold, hitting out at him with elbows and knees, in a blind panic to get free. My hands wrapped more desperately around his fingers where they squeezed my throat, trying to get under them, and he slammed my head against the wall, hard enough that I saw white.
The blow stunned me, nearly knocked me out.
I dragged in breaths, fighting to get oxygen into my lungs before I blacked out for real. Giving bare gasps, I looked around for a weapon, anything, gripping his fingers tighter.
Knives in the kitchen... too far. Wine bottle candle holder. Stone lion my friend Lacey brought back for me from Africa... spare keys... a book...
My mind fuzzed when he squeezed harder.
He lowered his head, bringing his lips to my ear.
“Say something clever, Miri,” he hissed softly. “Go on. Astound me with that amazing half-worm intellect of yours. Or better yet... why don’t you try again to use your pathetic, halfbreed sight against mine?” He slammed my head against the wall again and I let out a groan, my eyes rolling up. “I thought you had rules about that kind of thing, pet? Do I fall outside them now? Is it open season on me now that you have another brother seer to suck off... ?”
“Ian,” I gasped. “Ian... I’m sorry... I’m sorry...”
“Yeah. I bet you are. I just bet you’re sorry now, Miri.”
He leaned closer to me, smelling my hair.
“...I can smell him all over you, Miriam. I smelled him out in the damned hallway. So how did he like it? Did he enjoy rolling in the filth of your half-breed cunt... ?”
I stared up at him, confused.
He’d said it a few times though. He clearly wanted me to hear it.
Half-breed.
If he noticed my bewilderment, it didn’t show on his face.
“He must have liked it more than I ever did, Miri,” he said. “He must have, for you to be slavering after him like a bitch in heat after only one night...”
That fury expanded off him as he said it, making me flinch. His voice dropped to a murmur, almost intimate where he spoke into my ear.
“...Personally, I preferred screwing your human friends. They may be a lesser race... but at least they know their place. That one friend of yours? Lacey? She cried afterwards. She cried and cried. Silly, stupid cunt thought she’d betrayed you...”
Fighting his grip, I yanked on his fingers, trying to get more air into my lungs.
He’s going to kill me. Ian’s going to kill me.
It was the only thought that mattered.
I had to get free. I had to get him to let go of my throat before I blacked out. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else mattered at all.
I had to figure out what he needed to hear to let me live.
Or just loosen his hand enough that I could draw a full breath.
Looking down at me, he laughed.
“You still don’t get it, do you, Miri? I don’t care anymore. I would have killed you years ago, but it wasn’t my decision. It was never my decision. I am but a soldier in a much larger army... you would have been dead minutes after I met you, had it been up to me.” He squeezed my throat tighter, smiling when I let out a frightened cry, even as satisfaction exuded from his fingers. “But I don’t fucking care anymore, Miri. I don’t care. They can demote me, put me back in the trenches, kill me... I don’t care. I’ll take the penalty. Whatever it is, I’ll take it. I don’t give a shit. Whatever it is... it’ll be worth it.”
His smile widened, even as his eyes grew flat as metal.
“I’ll consider it a public service...” That disgust returned to his blue eyes. “My boss thought you were harmless. He thought we could just keep you... like a little halfbreed pet. He assigned me to hold your leash.” Fury once more twisted his face. “But I’m overruling him, love. I think he’s wrong. The fact that you apparently like to screw traitors to the race strikes me as pretty compelling evidence that you’re not as ‘harmless’ as you pretend...”
When I met his gaze, I recognized that dead-eyed stare.
My mind flickered back to the night before.
The museum burning.
The gun pointed at my face. The hatred I’d felt.
Even so, some part of me could scarcely make sense of it. Emotion hit me. Grief. More than that, confusion roiled my brain, fighting the adrenaline that kept screaming at me that I was about to die. I couldn’t compute what my mind already knew, couldn’t make sense of any of it. All I could think was that I was going to die. Ian was going to kill me.
The man I was going to marry was going to kill me.
“Why?” I gasped, barely able to get the word out under his vice-like grip. “Why?”
“Gaos,” he said, staring at me with utter contempt. “It’s really not an act with you, is it, Miriam? You really don’t have a fucking clue about anything, do you?”
When I didn’t answer, gasping and clawing at his hands around my throat, he shook me, violently enough to make my teeth rattle. My throat burned. Every sliver of oxygen I managed to get down it felt like not enough, not nearly enough.
I hit out at him sharply with my elbows and feet, but he smashed my head against the wall again. It terrified me how close I came to blacking out that time.
When I could see again, he squeezed my throat tighter, crushing my windpipe.
I saw spots, nearly passing out again.
He’s playing with me, I realized. Bringing me to the edge of death and back simply to amuse himself. He’s deliberately prolonging this.
When I could see again the next time, he’d pinned my arms against his chest.
His face was close. I could see his blue eyes studying mine, curiously vacant, watching me like I was some kind of animal. It hit me again that he was entertaining himself, watching my consciousness fade, then return.
Black! I screamed out with my mind. BLACK! HELP ME! HELP ME!
“There were times I couldn’t be sure,” Ian said, still watching my eyes. A faint hint of that disgust returned to his voice. “I honestly thought a few times, that you might be playing some kind of double game with me, Miriam. I thought you couldn’t possibly be as stupid as you pretended. That you couldn’t possibly believe all of the coincidences that just kept ‘happening’ around you. That you knew, deep down, it had to be more.”
Thinking about my parents dying, my sister, I fought a pain that rose in my chest.
Zoe. Zoe, who had the greatest laugh, like it came out of the very bottom of her, bubbling out because she couldn’t stop it.
Tears ran down my face, even as I stared up at those dead-looking eyes.
BLACK! HE’S GOING TO KILL ME! HELP ME! PLEASE!
Ian smiled, and I recoiled from it.
“I figured you had to know by now.” Anger leaked back into his voice. “Especially once Black started sniffing around you... but you really didn’t know, did you? You really are as fucking stupid as I thought you were pretending to be.”
He squeezed my throat tighter when I didn’t answer.
The loss of oxygen made me panic. Pure animal reaction that time––survival. My body bucked, writhing in desperation, but I couldn’t get free of his hands.
He loosened his fingers even as I was in the process of blacking out.
When I sucked in half a breath, whimpering as I recovered, he gripped me harder again, making me moan. He smiled wider.
“You really have no clue what you are even now... do you, pet? No clue at all.” He shook his head, making that weird clicking sound I’d heard from Black a few times. “You’re even stupider than these fucking worms. Although maybe it’s a blessing you didn’t know... for you, too, I mean.” His voice grew intimate again, almost seductive as he spoke in my ear.
“If you had,” he murmured. “You likely would have killed yourself, Miri. I know I would have, if it was me.” His voice hardened to metal. “You have no idea how much I hated having to touch you all of those nights, knowing what you are. Having to pretend that your very existence doesn’t make me physically ill...”
Drawing back his head, he stared at me, as if looking for my reaction.
Then his eyes changed again, filling with something like fury.
“I mutilated myself for you.” His voice turned coldly accusing. “I let them cut me for this. For the cause. I degraded myself. I will have to purge myself for lifetimes to cleanse the stench from my light. To make myself worthy once more of a higher resonance with the Ancestors...”
Still using his arm to pin me to the wall, he reached up with the same hand, fishing the contact lenses out of his eyes, one by one.
When he looked at me next, those nearly white irises I remembered from the night before stared back at me. Fear bloomed over me all over again at the coldness in that inhuman stare.
BLACK! HELP ME! PLEASE! CALL NICK! CALL NICK!
“No one is coming for you, Miriam,” Ian said, grasping my throat tighter with both hands. “No one is coming.”
Shielding my mind when I realized he’d heard me, I fought to think past his words.
Then I fought to think about them. Not so much the words themselves, but more what they meant for me. I skimmed through them, trying to decide if any of it could help me, if any of it might be something I might use.
Definite religious overtones. Self-aggrandizing. Psychopathic... not only for the killings but the fact that he’d lied to me with impunity for all those years. Pride in his work. Feels he’s done good work here, with me... with those poor women.
Religion as an excuse for psychopathic behavior? Or was there more to it?
Reference to a wider cause, more adherents––quasi-military rhetoric. Didn’t sound or feel job-related. A cult? Clearly it was related to what Black told me about. The angel, the odd symbols, racial purity, it all had hints of apocalyptic religiosity of some kind. Or maybe a perversion of several religions, some combination of human and other.
Christian, for the human side? The angel suggested that.
Either way, unless he was totally delusional, Ian wasn’t working alone.
Black intimated some other religion might be involved... something imported from that other Earth. Something about race, although Black never mentioned anything about “half-breeds.” He also never connected it to me in any way. I didn’t get the same feeling from Black when he talked about the race thing, anyway. With him it was science. The races were merely a fact of life to Black, not some kind of quasi-spiritual predetermination.
Ian’s rant had more the flavor of... eugenics. Blood purity as a means of salvation. So... race-based religiosity. Superior race, Superman type stuff.
Nietzsche? Something like Hitler’s ideology?
My mind circled around it from different angles, different snippets of philosophies, trying to find some help there... anything I could use.
Without knowing the specific doctrine, I couldn’t see a way in.
I was running out of time.
He was toying with me now, but that couldn’t last.
The sadist wanted to prolong things, to hurt me––make me suffer. The psychopath wanted an audience; he wanted me to know exactly what he’d done, how clever he’d been, how stupid I was. The religious nut wanted to feel absolved of any wrongdoing, to be told he was a higher being, worthy of praise for the sacrifices he’d made. Or perhaps he just wanted me to understand the favor he was doing the rest of the world, ridding it of me.
Either way, the psychopath would grow bored soon.
The psychopath already had me more or less at its mercy, which made me less interesting.
Once it got bored, I was dead.
I fought to hold onto that, to make sense of his different parts. But I couldn’t really see how any of it would help me. The lack of oxygen was making it difficult to think.
I was having to fight not to succumb to the chemical change that made my body want to dissolve into passivity, to shut down into a truly helpless stasis. It was a physiological and survival response that would end in unconsciousness.
Even as I thought it, I let my body go limp.
Exhaling the last bit of oxygen I’d held in my already-burning lungs, I let every muscle in my body go slack. I opened my mind’s shield, let my thoughts drift into a state of utter defeat. I let go of the muscles in my neck and face, let my eyes roll back into my head.
“Stupid cunt,” he said, slamming me back up against the wall again. “Wake up! I’m not done talking to you!”
I let my head loll where gravity took it. I only squeezed my eyes tighter briefly from the blow. The rest of my muscles remained soft, my face slack.
When he did it again, I gave a half-conscious, reflexive kick of my leg.
Ian’s fingers loosened.
I jerked my whole weight down and sideways, pivoting on my good foot and knee. The sudden, violent motion forced his fingers open. It also yanked the muscles of my neck, bringing a burning pain. I dropped my weight once I got free and he lunged after me, catching hold of my shoulder right before he swung his fist.
He punched me hard, right in the shrapnel wound in my leg.
The pain was so intense I nearly blacked out again.
I let out a cry, falling backwards into my window.
My elbow crashed through a colored hexagram of Victorian glass, right before Ian twisted my arm, slamming my shoulder and hand into the clear pane to the left of it.
My whole arm and half my body went through the window that time, and I screamed.
Twisting my body when he yanked me back inside, I threw my weight forward, catching him off-guard enough to knock him off balance. Before he’d recovered, I grabbed for the wine bottle on the low table with my other hand. I slammed my hip into the same painted table as I did it, knocking over knick-knacks and candles in the corner nook by the kitchen table. Grasping the neck of the bottle when Ian yanked me back by the waist, I managed to keep hold of it even as he dragged me back.
Once I knew I had it, I kicked off the wall with my good leg.
Using that and my weight along with the momentum of his pull to swing my whole body backwards, I kicked again off the table and one chair to knock into him harder. Coming down on top of him, I twisted in midair, cracking him on the head with the bottle on my way down.
I hit him really damned hard.
I heard something when I did it.
It might have been all in my head, that sound.
Even so, bile rose to my throat.
Disentangling myself from where I’d landed on him, I pulled myself to my feet, using the wall without letting go of the wine bottle. He still knelt on the carpet, holding the back of his head with both hands. I didn’t hesitate when I saw him upright, even though he was on his knees. Using the wall to stay upright, I smashed the bottle down again. Then again.
After the third blow, he stopped moving for real.
By then, he’d crumpled to the carpet. There was blood on my hands, and on my face and neck. I stared down at him, my chest heaving, feeling sick.
I had no idea if I’d killed him. I guessed I probably had.
I was still standing there, trying to decide what to do next, whether I should go knock on my neighbor’s door, borrow a phone to call Nick or Angel or Black or maybe all three of them...
When the door to my apartment slammed open.
I looked up, still holding the neck of the bloody wine bottle in my hand.
I’d forgotten about my arm, which had been sliced up by the window.
“Jesus, Miri...” Nick stood there, holding up his gun.
He lowered it slowly as he took in my appearance, then he was staring at the body crumpled at my feet, his eyes wide. I’d never seen him look like that before.
“Jesus Christ,” he repeated. “...Miri. What the hell happened? What did you do?”
Staring at him, I let out an involuntary laugh.
Somewhere in the middle of it, it turned into a sob.